Wracked with angst over the fate of our beloved and horribly misgoverned Republic, the DiploMad returns to do battle on the world wide web, swearing death to political correctness, and pulling no punches.

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This has gotten completely out of control. I never thought I would see our country's politics reduced to the degrading levels of a Banan...

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Yet Another Devastating Blow to the Drug Gangs! Another Decisive Victory in the War on Drugs!

The good guys have won yet another stunning victory in the never-ending "war" on drugs. They have captured the creepy, violent, murdering chief of the Mexican Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. According to the press, Mexican Navy special forces, supported by the US DEA and Marshal Service, cornered and caught "El Chapo" at a luxury condo in the Mexican resort and vacation city of Mazatlan,

Guzman faces multiple federal drug trafficking indictments in the U.S. and is on the DEA's most-wanted list. His drug empire stretches throughout North America and reaches as far away as Europe and Australia. His cartel has been heavily involved in the bloody drug war that has torn through parts of Mexico for the last several years.

His arrest followed the takedown of several top Sinaloa operatives in the last few months and at least 10 mid-level cartel members in the last week. The information leading to Guzman was gleaned from those arrested, said Michael S. Vigil, a former senior DEA official who was briefed on the operation.

As I have said before, I am glad when these creeps are caught or otherwise neutralized. They are murdering pigs who have killed countless numbers of people all over the world. The problem, of course, is that it is our policies and laws which have built the pigpen for these swine, and which continue to provide them the nutritious slop they need to survive.

If we legalized drug use, the pigpen would begin to disappear as would the flow of slop. Once the idiots who use drugs could get them at their local Walgreens, Ralph's, Tesco, Costco, Woolworth's, Corte Ingles, etc., the "El Chapos" of the world would be out of business. There are, of course, many details that need to be worked out in legalizing drugs, but I would rather we work on those, debate those issues, and find commonsense solutions for those issues than continue this endless and pointless and bloody "war."

To use a different animal analogy, we are akin to a man who breeds large rats in his basement. He complains about those rats moving into his living room; celebrates every time he catches or kills one; and then sends food down to the rats in the basement. Some advice: Stop feeding the rats!

Re the stated objectives of the drug "war." Do a simple test. Ask, what medium to long-term effects will the arrest of "El Chapo" have on illicit drug availability, prices, or violence?

I am in favor of legalization of heroin and marijuana, plus heroin/morphine derivatives. The problem is that home grown labs are taking over the meth market and there are lots of weird concoctions now on the street like "Bath Salts" that nobody even knows what the ingredients are. These nightmare mixtures are not the cartels' production so legalization should help the crime problem.

and those are the kind of issues we should be discussing not whether we need to put an aircraft in the Caribbean to intercept cigarette boats-full of cocaine and weed. Drugs should be an issue for doctors, nurses, health care experts and fought using social peer pressure, not by building more jails, hiring more cops and wardens and prosecutors.

"Drugs should be an issue for doctors, nurses, health care experts and fought using social peer pressure, not by building more jails, hiring more cops and wardens and prosecutors." -Dip

There's the rub.If you have a chronic condition, and know you are going to need a certain drug, you have to go see a doctor to get the script. For me, it is broncitis. I know what it is. I know what it takes to get rid of it. Why do I have to spend $100 every winter seeing a doctor that is going to tell me the same thing? Now, one must understand fully the ramifications of the bugs becoming more resistant but as far as I'm concerned it is the medical profession and their union- the AMA- that keeps the status quo. As far as I'm concerned legalizing everything would be ideal, but there are just too many knuckleheads in society that don't care about anyone but themselves. Too sad? Take this pill. Your kid is too loud? Here, have a bottle of adderall. Need some sleep while waiting for the train to pass? Take this one... You will have a 'instant gratification' society on steriods... (oops sorry for that.)

"as far as I'm concerned it is the medical profession and their union- the AMA- that keeps the status quo."

Every time I see that, or something like it, I stop reading. The AMA has about 25% of US doctors as members and has no power over anything. At one time, in the 1930s, Morris Fishbein the president of it, had a lot of power. that was then. It is a corrupt outfit that represents only itself.

The abuses you list are mostly from patient pressure. "Why am I paying you if you won;t give me antibiotics ?"

You are absolutely right. Patients today want a pill for every little thing and by golly it better work within an hour or you're going to get a nasty call. The AMA has absolutely no sway over me, in fact, if they say something, I tend to look to the opposite for solution. But the patients wanting "something" in return for their copay is a HUGE problem we battle every stinking day.

It's so complicated ... nowadays you have to donate to the presidents of *both* sides of the border if you want to do this kind of business, and it helps to have a good line of leftist patter and maybe a charitable front where you feed a few orphans ... maybe he just didn't keep up?

Nice idea dDip, but the devil is always in the details. I perwsonally would just as soon NOT have taxpeyer money funding the local druggies latest fix... unless we(the taxpayers) got a say in what went into the mix, heh, heh, heh.

It's bad enough watching the leeches use their EBT cards in the grocery stores; would we have a different colored DBT card for the druggies that gots to be reloaded at 0000hrs on the last day of the month?

This represents a big victory in a long war that has several moving parts: drug growers, drug makers, drug cartels, drug suppliers, drug dealers and drug users. All along the way there is an immense amount of money within the pipeline. Most of the money feeds the supply chain. If the whole thing was somehow stopped, what would the CIA or their proxies use for funds to conduct off book operations around the world?

There's a mantra in network security that 'real' security is 'layered' security. If we don't want drugs running rampant on the street, a layered approach is generally appropriate. That's basically what we've been trying to do. We attempt interdiction at various levels: financial, abroad, en route, and at the dealer and user level.We've also made half-hearted attempts at policy-based peer pressure mechanisms (just say no, dare to keep kids off drugs, here's your brain.. here's your brain on whatever...)It's very hard to argue effectiveness without having a baseline to compare against. We can try to imagine baselines based upon the experiences of other nations, but that's going to be pretty spotty due to massive differences in culture, geography, politics, etc...Exactly how would drug use in America change if various categories of drugs were legalized? Obviously recreational drugs aren't going to be 'prescribed', so doctors really can't be factored into the analysis.What 'layers' are we missing?Which 'layers' are underperforming in their interdictive effectiveness and need improvement?Which 'layers' are creating diminishing returns due to collateral damage? (I think this argument is the main one being made these days, ie, that our foreign interdiction efforts aren't helping sufficiently and have large collateral costs... But again, is there a better way to validate this without a baseline where foreign interdiction isn't prosecuted?)

Some places go with the "balls to the walls" mechanism of extreme punishments for users. But that predictably fails, as again, it's not a layered approach. It just maintains a bunch of official corruption.

I mainly see this in computer system security, where some goofball decides he's found the "magic bullet" and puts all his eggs in his one little security basket, only to realize later that his impenetrable wall isn't.

I don't see anything inherently wrong with a culture which rejects drugs enshrining that rejection in law. I think legalization in America just kind of shows that our culture no longer rejects recreational drug use (as far as I can tell, this is a true statement). Laws need to reflect the will of the people to a large extent, right or wrong, I guess.

Sigh. What's the total cost ... not just money, but agents' lives ... in bringing down a kingpin like this? Big. What's the total cost of replacing him? Negligible.

If, as 1482 suggests, we are going to continue the drug war, it would be more cost-effective to concentrate on the users and the low-level sellers, put them away for long times--or just stop the welfare fraud. The kingpins would disappear the way that T. Rex disappears when the vegetation thins.

I myself am unpersuaded that it is wise to regulate what people put into their bodies. Other than antibiotics.

A simple question based on economics should be asked of those who oppose legalization - of marijuana at least:

If legal how much would the consumption increase?

My guess would be not much increase. Anyone who wants to buy pot pretty much can today.

I agree completely about requiring those on EBT cards, etc, to submit to regular and random drug testing as a qualification for continued government support and maintenance. The biggest social negative of pot smoking is slackerism. To subsidize that is social policy folly.

I have to admit, as a family practice practitioner, drug use is a HUGE problem in my town. Even though they usually don't work or work at low-paying jobs, they find the money to buy these drugs! And they usually smoke to boot! Don't know what the answer is, but something different has to be done. I can't help but think that if you test, (and I'm tested, so anybody who gets a check of somebody else's money for ANY reason), should also be tested regularly, and if you are positive for any substance, you should be ineligible for public assistance in any form FOREVER. If kids (yeah, I know, it's hardly just "kids") knew that no food stamps, no student loans, no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and so on ad nauseum, were to be unavailable should they "choose to use", maybe they wouldn't even start. Probably a pipe dream (pun intended), but SOMETHING has to be done. If not now, when?

Well, this is where we part company on opinions. I am constantly amazed at the people who support the legalization of addictive drugs but never had a kid hooked on them. Legalization will bring its own set of problems just as currently exists in the prescription drug trade.

Perhaps it is time to enact laws that say if you are on any kind of social welfare program, you have to submit to drug testing. Not just urine tests, which can be beat, but blood tests or hair tests. And what about the crack babies? Who is going to take care of them? Oh, that's right; we already do.

Legalizing alcohol hasn't reduced the number of drunks, or even make them more responsible, but it did give the progressives just another reason to create an illness (alcoholism) that we taxpayers wind up paying to have someone treated for.

And would legalizing drugs put the drug cartels out of business? Nope. They will just undercut the price that legal distributors sell for. The drug cartels will never have the expenses that the legal distributors have. Street dealers don't pay for store fronts, utilities, fixtures, cash registers or CPAs to do their taxes and report to the government. So they will just up their illicit production and cut their prices.

As a Washington state resident I can tell you many are NOT jubilant about the "flood" of taxes (or in confiscatory government speak -revenue) . Its a strange dichotomy that tobacco is "evil" but somehow legalizing pot is the "greater good". And if people in general are responsible.... I use that word tongue-in-cheek....drug users, then there will be no social issues or costs associated with it. Right? The unintended consequences and costs associated with this decision have yet to be measured. And as far as this goes, many employers still classify marijuana use and employment as mutually exclusive....it's part liability, part quality, etc. Don't get me wrong, people should have the right to choose what they want to do, but they don't have the right to in essence force the rest of us to hear the costs of their behavior and.choicea

"The economics of prohibition involve raising the costs of illicit transactions."

How will that be made any less when drug cartels are competing for business with brick and mortar businesses who have to command a certain price to stay in business?

"The high taxes on cigarettes, for example, have resulted in an increase in black market sales. Moonshine is the traditional American response to federal alcohol excise taxes."

Bingo. Instead of a decrease in the black market, we have seen an increase in it.

"Certainly Colorado and now Washington state are now jubilant over the flood of taxes coming in the state treasuries."

Which proves that this movement to legalize pot (the first step in the legalization of all addictive drugs) is not a "freedom" movement, but simply a revenue generating scam by irresponsible politicians.

Crime rates will increase with "legal" sales of addictive drugs for the same reason it soars due to the sales of "illegal" sales; money will be required to purchase those drugs and it doesn't matter if those drugs are being sold legally, or illegally. Already DUIs are on a rapid rise in Colorado and I believe, as does some of my "drug task force" buddies, that will be only the tip of the iceberg.

Woohoo, I'm excited about getting on the roadways of America not only having to dodge the drunks, but the stoners, as well.

We can buy legal drugs-Rx, newly legal drugs, alcohol and lottery tickets, all at the same strip shopping center without moving our cars. The State will collect a lot of revenue which will eventually be needed to remedy the harm done by the above after they are mixed and abused. Insurance premiums, especially auto will go up, with some carriers abandoning many states all together. We have a drug problem alright but it is at its most basic a character problem.

I take issue with the concept that legalizing drugs will solve our crime problems without consequences.

Pot and cocaine, maybe. But regular use of pot, especially in youth has been shown to reduce cognitive skills. And it causes users to wear pony-tails well into middle age. But heroin and crystal meth are destroyers. Those addicted to them end up as human garbage, unable forever to lead productive lives. The UK conducted a noble experiment in the late 1950s and early 60s. They provided for free weekly dosages to heroin addicts. What did it accomplish? The number of addicts in the system doubled every 9 months. After about 8 years, the UK shut it down as a failure.

About Me

W. Lewis Amselem, long time US Foreign Service Officer; now retired; served all over the world and under all sorts of conditions. Convinced the State Department needs to be drastically slashed and reformed so that it will no longer pose a threat to the national interests of the United States.